• theodewere
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    494 months ago

    Biden is a lot better than people realize… getting to 14th in one term is stellar…

    • ares35
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      244 months ago

      and that’s with the circus clowns leading the house of representatives, too.

      • theodewere
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        and i’ll have to go back and check my history books on this one, but i’m pretty sure he’s the only one to take office two weeks after his predecessor tried to end the government

  • @ilinamorato@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    By whom/in what poll? Of what respondents? When? What was the actual question asked?

    I hate it when accounts like this just post a “fact” with no supporting documentation, source, link, or even image. Devoid of context, this is either important news or completely meaningless.

    If this poll is by a reputable polling outfit, it’s probably significant (and the other answers should be available). If it’s a JavaScript poll posted on some random site, there’s no information here.

    If the poll was asked of likely Dem voters, it’s not very significant (maybe significant that Biden is ranked so low). If it’s a representative sample of likely voters, it’s incredibly significant. Historians? Might be significant. “PeopleWhoRankPresidents.net” users? Definitely weird.

    If it’s a poll from day 1 of the Biden admin, it’s not very notable. Though the framing of this tweet suggests the timing is “recently,” which may be significant.

    If the question was, “rank every president in order of how pretty you think their dogs are,” then who cares? If it was “where do you think Biden and Trump rank in terms of policy,” then it’s almost as meaningless because nobody has taken the time to consider which thirteen go in front of Biden, that number is just a stab in the dark. If it’s “rank every president in your lifetime in terms of policy,” this is actually a terrible poll for Biden because it essentially puts him second-to-last.

    Leaving these details out vastly weakens your point, because it sounds like you’re intentionally omitting those data points that don’t support your conclusion.

    Or it’s just your own personal opinion. Which is fine! You’re on the internet, you’re allowed to have an opinion, just frame it as such. And it would be more interesting than an unsourced poll, honestly; particularly for somebody running a Twitter account about how good Biden is, why did you put him so low on the list?

    Or you’re (not you, OP, the Twitter user) a Russian troll farm trying to drum up infighting in American politics. Which is, at this point, like trying to rinse off the deck of the Titanic.

    • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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      194 months ago

      I just did a quick search to brush up on why Andrew Jackson is a bad president, and I found a lot of similarities about corruption, ruling for personal gain or spite, authoritarianism, distrusting professional merit-based employees and replacing with personal loyalty-based amateurs , etc. Jackson starts with a lead as a war hero, but then again Trump didn’t try to destroy native Americans

      • @formergijoe@lemmy.world
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        124 months ago

        He did try to get a native casino in Connecticut closed in 1993. Part of his testimony to Congress was “You’re saying only Indians can have the reservations, only Indians can have the gaming. So why aren’t you approving it for everybody? Why are you being discriminatory? Why is it that the Indians don’t pay tax, but everybody else does? I do.”

        Also in 2000 Trump paid over $1 million on a smear campaign managed by Roger Stone against the St. Regis Mohawks in protest of their opening of a casino in the Catskills.

        So nothing while president, but still not a great track record when dealing with native Americans.

      • @Lemming421@lemmy.world
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        94 months ago

        but then again Trump didn’t try to destroy native Americans

        He was quite happy for millions of Americans (regardless of ethnicity) to die rather than do the minimum amount of work to get Covid recognised as an actual problem, not to mention actively peddling bullshit theories that probably made things even worse.

        I’m not an historian, but from what I know about Jackson, you could make the argument “he was an asshole, but he was of his time”, whereas Trump is an asshole regardless of what decade it is.

        • @beardown@lemm.ee
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          44 months ago

          Jackson was not an asshole of his time, he was drastically worse. Do not whitewash the trail of tears

          • @RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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            I conditionally disagree. It’s fine to judge the past by today’s standards, that’s how we know we’ve changed and are doing better.

            However you must also judge them framed in their own time. Was the dude impaling his conquered opponents on spikes normal for the time or did neighboring kingdoms go “WTF, dude?!” If normal, he was NTA then, but definitely the asshole by today’s standards.

            Understanding correctly framed history is not whitewashing. Changing, minimizing for gain, or cherry-picking history to meet today’s standards is.

            • @beardown@lemm.ee
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              34 months ago

              You’re acting like people in the 1830s just didn’t know that ethnic cleansing and genocide of Native Americans was wrong.

              They did know. And some, including SCOTUS, tried to stop Jackson. They failed. And Native Americans paid the price.

              This country was built on human slavery and genocide. Do not minimize or turn away from those evils

              • @RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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                4 months ago

                This country was built on human slavery and genocide. Do not minimize or turn away from those evils

                Can you stop with this shit? Nobody here is denying anything. We are discussing how we frame history from a modern perspective and whether or not the general population (not some minority) in Jackson’s time viewed his actions as unacceptable. If you don’t want to have that discussion, go wear your sandwich boards and earplugs elsewhere.

                • @beardown@lemm.ee
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                  04 months ago

                  “We” are actually discussing how this country was built on slavery and genocide. Turning away from that fact because it makes you uncomfy won’t bring back those who were murdered by the United States

      • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        84 months ago

        Jackson starts with a lead as a war hero

        Holding New Orleans against the British to preserve southern slavery for another half-century is hardly something to brag about.

      • @Thoth19@lemmy.world
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        74 months ago

        Jackson also blatantly committed the high crime of ignoring a lawful court order from the supreme court. But congress knew it was political suicide to censure him for the trail of tears(which was absurdly popular) so he wasn’t impeached for it.

        Trump is pretty bad. But he didn’t order a genocide and flout checks and balances to do it. Not that he isntr trying.

      • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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        -14 months ago

        Kicked off the “Spanish” Flu because he couldn’t resist mobilizing millions of Americans for war in Europe.

        It makes Trump’s roll in COVID/Ukraine seem quaint by comparison.

        • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          24 months ago

          Did Wilson know about the 1918 Spanish Flu when he declared war on April 6, 1917?

          Seems a bit of a stretch to me.

          • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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            The flu originated at Camp Funston at Fort Riley in Kansas in March 1918, where troops were mobilizing for deployment to Europe.

            Rather than quarantine in the face of mass infection, the base continued to circulate new units through while covering up the spike in deaths from the diseases. They kicked off a global super spreader event as a result.

            Once infected soldiers reached the cesspit of the European front lines, the disease rampaged all through the continent. But, for national security reasons, nobody would report on the sudden devastating rise in the mortality rate of soldiers. That is, except the Spanish media, which operated from a neutral country.

            Because the Spanish press was the only media network reporting the disease, it earned the moniker “Spanish Flu”.

            But there’s no way Wilson was unaware of the huge spike in mortality figures. His War Cabinet coordinated attempts at medical intervention at that same Kansas military base a year later, long after the cat was out of the bag.

            • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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              14 months ago

              But there’s no way Wilson was unaware of the huge spike in mortality figures. His War Cabinet coordinated attempts at medical intervention at that same Kansas military base a year later, long after the cat was out of the bag.

              He should have known about it a year before they started doing medical intervention? I’m not sure the logic here. The fact that medical interventions at the same place a year later means people should’ve known when the first cases started being reported?

              • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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                14 months ago

                He should have known about it a year before they started doing medical intervention?

                His administrative staff should have alerted him to it, at a minimum. And his chief officer corpse should have responded to the skyrocketing mortality rate of soldiers who hadn’t even reached the front lines yet.

                But that would have disrupted the March to War, an unforgivable sin.

                The fact that medical interventions at the same place a year later means people should’ve known when the first cases started being reported?

                The fact that they were actively seeking to inoculate against the spread means they’d already recognized the problem in advance and yet continued to send infected troops to the front line for months.

    • @UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world
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      04 months ago

      And Polk and Buchanan and Hoover and Nixon.

      There are so many more Presidents worse than Trump that we simply never had to live through. Imagine your capital being burned to the fucking ground because your President decided to launch an ill-conceived invasion of Canada. Imagine being so unpopular a President that you come in third place as the incumbent. Imagine kicking off the “Spanish” Flu because you simply couldn’t resist playing the Great Game of European Powers at the tail end of the First World War.

      Absent a second term to really crank things up a notch, Trump will go down in history as an embarrassment. But he’ll be lucky to break the Top 5 in terms of serious bad shit.

      • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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        124 months ago

        Imagine the President trying to overthrow democracy.

        We don’t have to imagine that because we did live through that. Sure other Presidents fucked up plenty, but only one tried to end democracy.

          • @Cypher@lemmy.world
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            4 months ago

            I’m not up to speed on US history, which other US Presidents tried to prevent the certification of the election of the President who ousted them?

            • @havokdj@lemmy.world
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              -34 months ago

              Who exactly ousted who? Trump lost, he wasn’t ousted by anybody.

              Anyways, pretty much every republican president since nixon has tried to end democracy, that’s kind of the goal of the republican party you know, the one that isn’t called the democratic party? At least Trump didn’t invade native lands and kill innocent women and children on more than one occasion, or literally duel to the death with children. Trump is a terrible president but he doesn’t come close to the worst.

              • @Cypher@lemmy.world
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                34 months ago

                Who exactly ousted who? Trump lost, he wasn’t ousted by anybody

                … that’s what being ousted is. An encumbant losing an election has been ousted, as in forced out of a role, yes by an election loss.

  • magic_lobster_party
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    174 months ago

    According to which criteria? No doubt he’s better than Trump, but 14th place feels way too high.

  • @bcgm3@lemmy.world
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    154 months ago

    It always irked me when people used “45” as a moniker for Trump before, but now it feels… apt.

  • @havokdj@lemmy.world
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    144 months ago

    Man look, I don’t like Trump either, but it is legitimately offensive to so many minorities to call him the “worst president” when you have contenders like Andrew Jackson

    • @skozzii@lemmy.ca
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      124 months ago

      Did Jackson lead an insurrection against his own country while trying to divide them into civil war at every step?

      • @Belgdore@lemm.ee
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        54 months ago

        He genocided the Native Americans. He ignored the constitutional structure of the executive and developed his own “kitchen cabinet” effectively siphoning power to give to his friends.

        • @RGB3x3@lemmy.world
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          14 months ago

          He ignored the constitutional structure of the executive and developed his own “kitchen cabinet” effectively siphoning power to give to his friends.

          Trump too though. Still pales in comparison to genocide.

    • @shinratdr@lemmy.ca
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      34 months ago

      It’s not offensive it’s just recency bias. How are people honestly supposed to rank a leader that is 100+ years away from their own lives? It’s just a poll, it’s not a course on all the presidents and then an invitation to rank them in order.

      Trump is the worst president in most living people’s lifetime, extrapolating more than that from this is a mistake.

    • @PlaidBaron@lemmy.world
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      24 months ago

      I will maintain the position that Ronald Reagan did more damage to this country than any other president in modern times.

  • @Clbull@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    I genuinely worry that Trump will get back in and that the consequences will be dire.

    Sincerely hope that all the right wing nutjobs are a vocal minority and that we don’t actually have close to half the US electorate agreeing with Jan 6th.

    Trump proves a few things, impeachment and federal charges don’t matter when your political system resembles the fandom of two rival sports teams.

    • Alto
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      Andrew Jackson committed a genocide

      If you squint hard enough and hate him enough, you could argue Wilson as well (not the genocide part, but that depends on how much you think an earlier American entrance into WW1 would change things.

      Edit: I should add that Wilson is basically single handedly responsible for the rebirth of the KKK

      • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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        34 months ago

        I’ll ignore what could have happened with Teddy at the wheel entering the war as quickly as he could.

        Wilson wrote Southern Revisionism, as you said refounded the KKK, segregated The Federal Government, expanded the presidential powers to tyrannical proportions with the sedition and insurrection act, erected a bunch of statues that we are finally tearing down, of people that said they never wanted statues because they were traitors, started and expanded wars in South and Central America to create banana republics, and fostered endless US wars with Wilsonian Doctrine.

        Just what he did doesn’t require squinting at all.

      • @Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world
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        Not coincidentally, Andrew Jackson is one of Trump’s favorite presidents. He once displayed a portrait of Jackson in a room he was meeting with Native American leaders in.

      • @niktemadur@lemmy.world
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        What still gets to me is Gingrich leading with the goddamned trumpet against this… unconscionable marital betrayer from the Democratic Party… then gets his multiple affairs and betrayals exposed. So he quits. The trumpet is proudly picked up by Livingstone… who promptly gets his Washington extramarital affair exposed.

        It’s incredible how republicans turned all of our politics into a toilet, arrogantly huffing and puffing as some sort of self-appointed moral and christian “keepers of the flame”, and they cannot handle a lesson as simple and crucial as that story in the Gospels - “He who is without sin, cast the first stone”.

        And look at them now. Today republicans are worse in every respect, including mental/emotional health or balance, by an order of magnitude. They don’t care about optics anymore, have gone up their own assholes several times over, like some sort of fleshy klein bottle.

        republicans are warped beyond reality and decency, by a hypocrisy from a self-imposed ignorance, that is as corrosive as greed.

        EDIT: it was during a late-90s afternoon, driving on the highway from Bakersfield to Los Angeles while listening to the Clinton impeachment charade live on NPR Radio, that something clicked inside my head and I clearly realized that republicans are an enemy of the true common good. That’s when I started hating that group of political cancer cells on society. Then we got cheney and baby bush.

    • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      Wilson, Jackson, Polk, Reagan. If you really want scandalous Jackson is easily the most scandalous President in history. The country was shocked when he got in, and he went on to cause the Trail of Tears, and the deepest (by percentage, not actual dollar value) and longest depression in US history, by paying off all the national debt, and rendering the country unable to trade with other countries for a few years.

      Wilson wrote Southern Revisionism, refounded the KKK, erected a bunch of statues that we are finally tearing down, segregated The Federal Government, and may have caused WW2, and definitely set the stage for endless wars with Wilsonian Doctrine. He also caused and expanded several conflicts in South and Central America creating banana republics. Oh yeah, he expanded the presidential powers to tyrannical proportions with the sedition and insurrection act.

      Polk did Manifest Destiny, and was generally an asshole to the natives, and Monroe created The Monroe Doctrine, continuing the general assholery towards the natives, though those two probably weren’t considered scandalous in their day.

      Reagan had Iran Contra. That did give us some fun video games though.

    • /home/pineapplelover
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      14 months ago

      Us history: the list is too long

      Lots of presidents have done bad things even Obama with his invasion of privacy cyber monitoring to “keep us safe”

    • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      Wilson and Jackson are both worse than Trump. He was bad, but not refounding the KKK, segregation of The US Government, or Trail of Tears, bad. Heck Polk and Monroe could be considered worse than Trump and most people can’t remember who the first one was.

      • @Olhonestjim@lemmy.world
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        44 months ago

        And yet on the other hand, none of them ever attempted a coup after losing an election. All I’m saying is, he’s in the running for worst of all time, but I don’t feel we ought to stroke that part of his ego by giving it to him.

        • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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          Even with that. He’s a mediocre president at best. The absolute worst POTUSs were, in this order, #1 Wilson, #2 Jackson, #3 Reagan, #4 Nixon, #5 Polk, #6 Monroe.

          He should be the 25th or 26th president. That puts him in the 45th percentile, which is exactly where he belongs. Ineffective, unintelligent, unremarkable, but trending towards greed, selfishness, and stupidity. He should always be the lowest on the scale, that always coincides with the 45th percentile.

          For some reason we rarely remember the truly effective evil presidents.

  • @taanegl@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    Aha! But that’s only using liberal brainwashing techniques… like maths and statistics. Algebra is ARABIC! The number 0 is the true number of the beast! PREVENT MATHS FROM CORRUPTING OUR CHILDREN!!! 🙏🙏🙏🙏🙏✝️=♥️, ✡️☪️=✖️UH OH IVE SULLIED MYSELF WITH SEMETIC DEVIL SYMBOLS!!!

    /s

  • @BobGnarley@lemm.ee
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    44 months ago

    I’d say it was Reagan. For sure. Nixon close second. But fuck Trump too but I’d put him like 3rd or maybe even 4th worst

    • @AA5B@lemmy.world
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      Were you there for Reagan? He was very personable, very persuasive, and able to build overwhelming popular support. You may not agree with many of his policies but he was successful. He also had a very capable cabinet. Again, you may not agree with some of what they did, but they were successful at it.

      Lastly, most importantly, while conservatives may worship Reagan like an ancient god, he would be un-nominatably moderate when compared to current leading Conservatives.

      Compared to Reagan, Trump is more authoritarian, less capable, less persuasive, more Conservative, more corrupt, more self-serving, and surrounded by incompetent yes-men.

    • @AngryCommieKender@lemmy.world
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      34 months ago

      Wilson, Jackson, Reagan, Nixon, Polk. Trump didn’t do even half the damage to the natives and the country that those 5 did. Wilson is why the US claims to act as “world police,” as well as a fuckton of other shit that is still affecting the citizenry to this day.

  • archomrade [he/him]
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    14 months ago

    Why do we do this to ourselves?

    It’s not like we’re short of objective evidence of Trump being awful, why hold up a glorified buzzfeed listicle as evidence as if it’s not incredibly cringe? Nevermind the trivializing of actual genocides

  • @LemmyKnowsBest@lemmy.world
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    -24 months ago

    When are people going to understand that the president is not in charge of anything, and the president does not make any decisions? And this has been true since probably Kennedy was assassinated.

    But yes I agree trump has been the worst all-around human being with lowest moral & personal character & lowest verbal abilities, (equal with Biden’s lowest cognitive abilities) to ever pretend to be figurehead of the United States.

  • Zengen
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    -94 months ago

    Joe biden has the lowest approval rating of any US president that has ever sat in the oval office. By literally every single polling metric and every poll that has been conducted. He has lower approval than jimmy carter. Donald trump even though hes an evil moron. Still retains more popular support. I dont see how this post is anything more than 1 persons personal opinion of Joe biden.

    • @keyez@lemmy.world
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      84 months ago

      I dont see how this comment is anything more than 1 persons personal opinion of Joe biden

      • @beardown@lemm.ee
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        -54 months ago

        That comment is an accurate summary of recent polls. Polls are representative samples of the public’s view. So no, the comment is clearly more than just “1 person’s personal opinion” because it provides a summary of the public’s opinion.

        Trump is bad and I hope Biden wins. That doesn’t mean we need to bury our heads in the sand about Biden’s current polling. Especially when a lot of that poor polling amongst young people is caused by Biden’s enabling of Israel’s genocide in Gaza

        • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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          14 months ago

          Young people are considered unlikely voters in polling, so aren’t a factor in it. Polling numbers for Biden are basically identical now to where they were in the beginning of October. Sorry kids, if you don’t vote, you don’t impact the polling.

          While Trump is willing to abandon allies because of popular social media narratives, Biden isn’t going to abandon an ally for that reason. And the social media narrative you’re consuming isn’t as popular as you might think.

          • @beardown@lemm.ee
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            4 months ago

            Genocide isn’t a “popular narrative” it’s a reality and it is being committed by the United States and Israel.

            Which shouldn’t be surprising given that both are settler colonialist states. We genocided the Native Americans, now Israel is doing the same to Gaza.

            Biden’s actions here are repugnant and the worst foreign policy action this country has taken since GWB lied to invade Iraq and tortured innocent people in secret prisons. Turning your head away from this won’t make it go away

            • @SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca
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              14 months ago

              Genocide isn’t a “popular narrative” it’s a reality and it is being committed by the United States and Israel.

              Yes that’s the narrative.

              • @beardown@lemm.ee
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                04 months ago

                It’s a narrative in the same way that Dachau was a narrative.

                Aka, it’s the truth, and it needs to be stopped

    • @beardown@lemm.ee
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      44 months ago

      The ranking was conducted by “expert historians.” So not exactly a random person, but take it for whatever that is worth to you